Canadian Lawyer

32 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m example, co-operative-style courses with the university's business and health facul- ties. And it's increasingly exposing stu- dents to new technology, too. "In our M&A course, we use software developed, incidentally, by two of our graduates. It enables corporate deals to happen online and in the cloud without the [traditional] war rooms of [paper- based] materials. Teaching this way expos- es students to the actual deal and helps them work through all its steps." Recent years have also seen the school introduce a number of specialized, elective study streams, designed to give students the ability not just to take a lot of intro- ductory courses but to actually advance through a coherent program of study. "By graduation, they're really special- ists in a particular field and can hit the ground running." The school also has a new third-year capstone course that helps students "put everything together [and subsequently] realize law doesn't come in neat little pack- ages but rather runs across what we would normally consider different courses." The capstone has students apply the theory and skills they've learned in the first two years to more complex programs . . . "as a bridge to practice," says Chamberlain. The school, which Chamberlain says has globalized its content as much as pos- sible, also offers students clinics in gen- eral, business and sports law — and has a mediation centre, too. Ed Iacobucci, dean of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, says emerging technology will definitely impact practice. "There's no question there's going to be change. To be sure, there are pressures on private practice." As such, Iacobucci's school is "explic- itly adding new programs and courses" to ensure it remains aligned with the times, he says. "We've embarked on some significant curricular changes in recent years," says Iacobucci. "For example, we have a new program at the professional master's level on innovation and technology that will explicitly explore the law surrounding innovation — IP being one example — but which also talks about how the law itself is going to evolve amid technological change." Then there's the school's increasingly co-curricular approach. Several years ago, it launched its Leadership Skills Program to teach professional communication skills and conflict management in the work- place. More recently, the school struck a partnership with the university's graduate business school to open up to its law stu- dents the online materials that Rotman's provides to its incoming MBA students — introductions to accounting, finance and statistics and so on. "There's a host of experiential opportu- nities within the co-curriculum program as well. We have clinical experiences and externships." Iacobucci says that, instead of a skills-based, practice-ready approach, law schools should continue to focus on enabling students to develop "higher-level thinking abilities." "We want to teach people how to think. That's part of our DNA. And everything follows from that." In addition, says Iacobucci, technology and skills training have increasingly short shelf lives, given the rapid pace of techno- logical change. "Who knows if the software you use today will be the software you use tomor- row. We are always looking to do what's best. But that doesn't necessarily mean something new." For Moyse, though, that may be miss- ing the point — at least when one looks at what the job market is likely to look like a few short years from now. "Software is eating the world and legal services have to be delivered now in some form other than a text-based narrative or by an advisory consultant . . . Increasingly, lawyers are going to be needed to build information products comprised of a mix of tech, design [and] project management. That's what I'd like to see law schools gear themselves toward." Don't believe him? Moyse points to the success of alternative legal services provider Elevate Services, currently the 53rd-fastest-growing private company in the U.S., according to Inc. magazine. Moyse is the Canadian lead for the Los Angeles-headquartered company. "Alternative legal service provision — integrated practical training still lacking A s long ago as 2007, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching — a U.S.-based foundation founded in 1905 — called for better legal teaching. The foundation's report — "Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profes- sion of Law" — studied 16 U.S. and Canadian schools and observed that most law schools give only casual attention to teaching students how to use legal thinking in the complexity of actual law practice. "Unlike other professional education, most notably medical school, legal education typically pays relatively little attention to direct training in professional practice. The result is to prolong and reinforce the habits of thinking like a student rather than an appren- tice practitioner," the report said. In Canada, only the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. has implement- ed the type of integrated curriculum recommended by the report — via an Integrated Practice Curriculum based on "integrating legal skill development with substantive legal knowledge," explains dean Angelique EagleWoman. "Our students are given meaningful experiential educa- tion through hands-on, face-to-face instruction. The man- datory four-month practice placement is designed to enable third years to further develop and refine, in a practice setting, relevant competencies and skill developed throughout the three-year program. "Overall," says EagleWoman, "the purpose is to see its graduates practise ready to work in the North and in sole and small-town practice." To date, 118 people have graduated from the IPC. How many have landed law-related jobs, however, remains unknown as EagleWoman says there's currently no "standard reporting mechanism" to answer that question.

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